believe they have already attracted the notice of members of the Royal Irish Academy, from whom, if from any, the interpretation of those inscriptions may be expected.

Between the antiquities of Ireland and those of the north of Scotland there are many points of interesting connection. The aborigines of both countries belonged to the same great family of the human race; both remained almost equally intact from the ambition of ancient Rome; neither had to bow the neck to the yoke of the old Saxons; both were harassed by the Danes; and while the Picts were compelled, partially, to succumb to warriors of Irish descent, it was to missionaries of Irish origin that they owed their first acquaintance with the Gospel of Peace! In both countries are still to be found many memorials of aboriginal times, which had once their resemblances in England, but which have there disappeared under "the tramplings of three conquests," and the march of modern improvement. I refer, particularly, to those remote times when Druidism bore its mystic sway. Its usages yet linger in customs of popular superstition, although oblivion has long since fallen on the meaning attached to them by a crafty, powerful, and domineering hierarchy. Many an age has passed since its oracles became dumb; but the nomenclature of its religious creed is still employed to express, by the unwitting Gael of the present

day, some of the mysteries of his purer faith! We have still the mysterious "temple," with its massive "cromlech," the poetry of the solitary moor, and seldom-trodden height,-many of which have been protected by our landed proprietors,-with commendable feeling, disregarding not the protest against eviction of those adscripta gleba, and refusing to abandon to

"Hands more rude than wintry winds."

relics which have braved the buffetings of countless storms.

NOTES ON THE PRESENT STATE OF

CRIME.

THIS subject is still a leading topic of discussion by all the more influential organs of opinion and their numerous correspondents. It has been a

theme of comment by several of the English Judges on their various circuits, and in one instance a strong representation of the necessity of penal reform was made by a Grand Jury through its Foreman, the Speaker of the House of Commons. In short, various circumstances have recently concurred to rouse the community to earnest consideration of the state of crime under its multiform relations and aspects, and to produce a universal conviction that some vital change of our penal system is indispensable to the security of society.

The system under which criminals have been disposed of during the last few years, involved a great change from that which preceded it. It was, of course, experimental, and its merits or demerits are being only now practically ascertained. That, to a considerable extent, it has proved a failure

seems to be admitted even by its warmest advocates. That this has been particularly the case in England is beyond denial. A great blunder has been committed in making the terms of penal servitude awarded by the Bench convey a false meaning. It is absurd to read of a Judge solemnly expatiating on the severity of a sentence of ten years' penal servitude, when it is well known that this really means only seven years' confinement. Then, it is stated by most competent authorities, and popularly believed, that this confinement is no adequate punishment; that, in fact, it is accompanied by so little of that suffering and discomfort which are the essence of penal infliction, that it falls altogether short of the end of all punishment, the deterring from crime. Reflection and common sense seem now to have reached the conclusion, that the change from the old to the present system partook not a little of the character of a rush from one scheme to another. Without doubt, a decided change was in various respects imperative. Our penal code was in many instances cruelly severe, and the reformation of criminals was a thing scarcely thought of unless by a few considerate philanthropists. Many comparatively venial offences against property were visited by the terrible punishment justly attached to the most atrocious murder. Retrospection to those times now fills us with astonishment that the community should have so

Y

long submitted to so cruel, so unchristian a system. But the great crisis in our political relations which occurred some thirty years ago, imparted to popular opinion an authority which has made itself powerfully felt along every fibre of our social frame. This influence was beneficially manifested in the proceedings of our Criminal Courts. It was tacitly respected by the Bench: it purified and improved the selection of Juries; and encouraged those Juries to assert their constitutional independence. Popular feeling and opinion, acting through Juries, corrected the too sanguinary character of the law. Jurors chose rather to do violence to their convictions, than perpetrate what in their estimation was a greater evil the consigning of a fellow-creature to capital punishment for an offence adequately punished by a few months' imprisonment. Nothing could have more clearly indicated the confliction between the law and public opinion, which is, in fact, the basis of all law. But the uncertainty of punishment caused by this anomalous state of things was found to involve defeat of the very ends of punishment. The only remedy, therefore, was to reconcile the character of the criminal code with the conclusions of intelligent and humane opinion, and to aim at the prevention of crime by the increased certainty of appropriate punishment. The number of capital offences was accordingly reduced to treason, murder, and arson attended